As most Big Ten programs continue to benefit from the conference’s financial boom, Rutgers is heading in the opposite direction. After pouring a record share of its budget into football, the program still fell well short of the revenue needed to support it, prompting new athletics director Keli Zinn to share a warning that reflects a widening gap between rising Big Ten spending and Rutgers’ inability to turn investment into return.

“I think what you’ll see a year from now is that’s going to be our worst year looking at a profit and loss scenario,” Zinn told NJ.com.

Rutgers spent a total of $193.8 million for the 2024-25 fiscal year. Of that amount, $76 million (around 40%) was spent on football, which is a program record. However, the income required to offset the outgoing funds has been minimal.

According to financial documents obtained through an Open Public Records Act request, the department generated $146.6 million in total operating revenue, including a record $61.3 million from the Big Ten’s media rights distribution and $10.7 million from the conference’s Football Bowl revenue fund. Those gains were offset by an 8.7% year-over-year increase in overall spending, leaving a $47.2 million operating shortfall. When combined with institutional subsidies, state funding, and student fees, the total deficit reached a program-record $78 million.

The Knights started with good momentum this season, winning all three non-conference games. But as soon as conference play began, the team slipped, winning only 2 game during this run. Ohio State handed Rutgers a blistering 9-42 loss. Penn State ended the Knights’ hopes of becoming bowl eligible, even after the latter put up a strong fight. Fans clearly had more expectations for the 2025 season, after Greg Schiano recorded 7-6 in the 2023 and 2024 seasons, but all they got was another low point, finishing 5-7 in 2025. The lack of an impressive performance forced ticket sales to generate only 9.2 million this year.

Zinn noted that the stagnation in ticket revenue stood out, particularly given the momentum of back-to-back winning seasons. While football ticket revenue dipped slightly year over year to $9.248 million, Rutgers did see a $1.3 million increase in single-game ticket sales during the most recent season, driven in part by late-season home games that drew a stronger turnout.

Despite Zinn’s admission of the department being in financial difficulty, this has become a regular phenomenon for Rutgers. It incurred a deficit of $78 million this past year, creating another program record. This is the third time in the last five years that the Knights incurred losses of more than $70 million. In 2021, the program hauled in a $73.3 million. Rutgers is now short by a total of $516.9 million since joining the Big Ten in 2014. That is despite department expenditures ballooning by almost 175% over the first 11 years of being in the conference.

Even with total athletics spending representing just 3.7% of the university’s $5.28 billion overall budget, Zinn stressed that the core issue is not runaway expenses but an inability to generate sufficient revenue to keep pace. “You could make the argument that we do not have an expense problem,” she said. “But we do in fact have a revenue problem and a pretty significant one.”

Hired on July 30, roughly a month after the fiscal year closed, Zinn said she personally reviewed the department’s financial ledger upon taking over, aware that Rutgers’ fiscal struggles had been under scrutiny for decades. “Regardless how we slice this thing, it’s got to get better,” she said. And well, from the looks of it, the work to getting there has already started.

Rutgers football has begun work on fixing these gaping holes

Rutgers was tabbed as the least valuable program in the Big Ten during this past season, according to findings from CNBC. At 506 million,  the school was ranked No. 56 on the list, only three places higher than last year. Despite the disappointing statistics, there are some things to look forward to.

Rutgers was among the 20 schools whose athletics valuation increased more than 20% in 2025. It shows that the department is putting in the work to cut down the alarming gap between income and expenditure. For example, Zinn has been working hard to attract more NIL opportunities for athletes, which is easily one of the biggest revenue generators in college football. For instance, she has brought on Dann Kabala, aka the NIL man, from PSU to look after the NIL program at Rutgers. Zinn herself comes from the big leagues, having been the deputy AD at LSU.

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Those efforts take on added urgency as Rutgers prepares to absorb a $20.5 million athlete revenue-sharing and scholarship expense in the current fiscal year, a figure not reflected in the most recent report and one Zinn expects to push total departmental spending beyond $200 million in 2025-26.

“You’ll see some level of improvement that’s expected in that ‘26-‘27 year and then by ’27-’28, based upon the current projections we have, in some growth categories and opportunities with revenue, I’m hopeful you’ll actually see (the deficit) start to decline,” she told NJ.com.

That timeline reflects a longer-term strategy centered on revenue growth rather than immediate cost-cutting, with Zinn identifying sponsorships, licensing, and premium seating as underdeveloped areas. Rutgers experienced nearly a $6 million decline in combined royalties, advertising, and sponsorship revenue, a drop Zinn attributed to unsold inventory and outdated commercial strategy rather than lack of demand.

Rutgers top brass is putting the right people in place to break free of the financial burden that’s accumulated over all these years. But fans won’t be getting to see any uplifting changes for a good few years down the line.

To address that, Rutgers is evaluating premium seating and hospitality upgrades at SHI Stadium and Jersey Mike’s Arena, acknowledging that the program currently ranks last in the Big Ten in sellable football inventory tied to high-end fan experiences. Zinn emphasized that any such investment would need to be financially sound, noting that without new revenue infrastructure, the department risks remaining locked in a cycle where rising costs continue to outpace growth.